From The Bookseller: Waterstone's is to launch its own e-reader in 2012 inspired by Barnes & Noble's Nook device. Waterstone's m.d. James Daunt has spoken to BBC Radio 4's "You & Yours" programme, on the edition broadcast today (9th September) at 12 p.m., telling the programme he wants to rival Amazon's Kindle. The Waterstone's chief said the project is "well down the planning line", and would launch in spring next year. On the programme, Daunt said: "We in Waterstone's need to offer you a digital reader which is at least as good, and preferably substantially better, than that of our internet rival,...

That's the title of an article on TorrentFreak about how the big news media will sue little sites for copyright infringement, but will happily infringe, themselves, knowing that the little guy can't sue them.  Here's part of the article: When it comes to copyright, we’re constantly hearing how the big companies are spending untold amount of money to ‘create’ content, only for it to be ‘stolen’ by people downloading it. Less often we hear of the reverse; big companies infringing the copyright of regular people. But it’s more common than you might think. Let’s take a look at...

The  Bookseller is reporting on a survey done in the UK among 250 book buyers in the US, UK and Germany.  The survey concluded: … an e-book without additional features should cost around 65% to 70% of the print price, though admitted there was "no simple formula" in hitting the pricing sweet spot. The survey also found current e-book users spend more on books than book buyers in general. According to the survey, 48% of book buyers in the US used e-books as well as audio and print, 45% in the UK, but just 15% in Germany. On pricing...

This was announced back in June but the collection has grown significantly since that date. It now includes 45K titles, up from 19K. Here is more from the press release: BiblioLabs, LLC and the British Library have launched their British Library 19th Century Historical Collection App for iPad - now available on the App Store. The App was announced in June with an initial offering of a thousand 19th century books - it now makes some 45,000 titles available to subscribers, expanding to over 60,000 titles by the end of the year. For just £1.99 a month in the UK...

The Bookseller Group has joined with other publishing organizations in the UK to formally request that the nation's Competition Commission investigate Amazon's proposed purchase of The Book Depository. The Bookseller's managing director explained that his company feels it will give Amazon too much control over the marketplace: Nigel Roby, m.d of The Bookseller Group, said: "It is not that TBD's acquisition creates a sudden, new, anti-competitive position; it is rather that it is the straw that broke the camel's back. If Amazon is in a stronger position to demand better terms from publishers, this could also have a knock-on effect for...

That's the report in The Bookseller. E-book sales accounted for over 8% of Pan Macmillan's trade sales in the first quarter of 2011, with the publisher predicting a rise to up to 10% by the end of the year. ... Pan Macmillan's rate of e-book sales has increased 15-fold, when comparing quarter one 2011 with quarter one 2010. The publisher now has 1,300 e-books available, up from 500 during the same period a year ago. Pan Mac highlighted Those in Peril by Wilbur Smith, Jeffrey Archer's Only Time Will Tell and titles by Peter James and Emma Donoghue as particularly successful e-book titles. ...

From The London Evening Standard: Details of England‘s national heritage from protected shipwrecks to listed lamp-posts are being made easily available to the public for the first time with a new online database. English Heritage today [Monday] launched the National Heritage List for England which it claimed was “a significant milestone towards achieving better understanding and protection for heritage in this country”. It lists all 400,000 listed buildings, parks, gardens, battlefields, shipwrecks and scheduled monuments. And for the first time, the public will be able to search by postcode, by age or by categories from coal-mines to castles. The database launch came as English Heritage...

The Guardian reports that a new format of book has come out. It’s small and light, and of a size to slip easily into a pocket. People read it from top to bottom, then flip down to the next page. Oh, and it’s not electronic—it’s paper. This is the new “flipback” book—originated in Holland, and now spreading to Spain, France, and soon the UK. It seems to be modeled after paperbacks, except smaller—approximately Gideon New Testament size, and with the same sort of extremely-thin page. But instead of turning pages from side to side, you hold it vertically and...

From The Register: Eight per cent of UK adults have paid money for an electronic book since Christmas, with the average reader getting through 5.75 titles. ... Those who got an e-reader for Christmas top the figures, buying (on average) 5.9 books each, while downloaders who had to make do with an iPad or smartphone only bought 5.3 books – though that's still a lot of reading to get though in the 35 days following Christmas. Those with a dedicated e-reader unsurprisingly downloaded the most, with 84 per cent of them sourcing additional reading material (we assume the remaining 16 per cent are...

From The Literary Platform: The Man Booker Prize has just unveiled its new iPhone app – a first for UK literary prizes. The app, created by award winning digital agency Vexed Digital, will be free to download and will offer access to the Man Booker Prize archive – offering a full chronological history of the prize including information about the judges and the longlist, shortlist and winning authors and books. App users will be able to access exclusive author interviews, video content and audio and text extracts from selected Man Booker Prize titles. Push notification functionality will let users know about...

From The Bookseller on Bloomsbury's earnings reports and future plans: The group plans to expand its online library service, Public Library Online, with a US site, an Australian site and others to be launched in different locations and languages; They are experiencing "unprecedented growth" in digital publishing; Highlights include the launching of the digital Berg Fashion Library and Bloomsbury Academic platforms; North America sales were up 2.3%, and were driven by backlist and digital performance....

This isn't scientific, but it certainly communicates the basic truth of the matter as of August 5. As of 4:30 pm Eastern time today, August 5, a US Kindle customer could have purchased the top 25 bestselling books in the US Kindle Store sales rankings for a grand total of $252.10. Over in the UK, at exactly the same time, a UK Kindle customer could have purchased the top 25 bestselling books in the UK Kindle Store sales rankings for a grand total of £99.13, which is the equivalent of $157.58 in US dollars. The books that make up the two lists, of...